Once again, the question: “Who is Mr. Putin?”

Mar 16, 2012

Ben Aris

Although the political Putin has been demonized in the Western press, Russians welcomed him. Source: ITAR-TASS

After Vladimir
Putin was first elected president in 2000, journalists spent the next six
months trying to figure out who he was. Not one but two Putins quickly emerged.
The first is better known to foreigners. This is the political Putin, who nixed
the popular elections of regional governors and drove the oligarchs out of the
Kremlin. Putin’s image of strongman reached its zenith with the jailing of
Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the former owner of oil company Yukos, in 2003. By the
start of Putin’s second term in office in 2004, he was fully in control of the
country and imposed a political stability on Russia that has remained ever since.
Although the political Putin has been demonized in the Western press, Russians
welcomed him as a much-needed change after the chaos of the Boris Yeltsin era.

But the second Putin is much better known to the locals, and he is the reason
that so many people still vote for Putin in national elections. This is the
economic Putin.

Even before the oligarch arrests or end of regional elections were introduced,
Putin slashed income taxes to a flat rate of 13 percent and corporate taxes to
24 percent. More subtly, he introduced a federal treasury system that put the
center back in control of the nation’s finances and stopped the rampant
stealing by regional administrations. Then he launched the Gref plan of liberal
reforms. These reforms, together with rapidly rising oil prices, led to a
sustained economic boom that transformed the Russian economy.

And it should be no surprise that the economic Putin is genuinely popular among
many Russians. When he first became president, the average income was a mere
$50 a month; today it is $800 — a 16-fold increase.

Over the months of the 2012 Russian presidential campaign, it became clear that
the country needs a new growth model; the old one of high oil prices
accompanied by heavy spending is not going to work for much longer. At the same
time Putin, for his part, reverted to his tough-guy political persona.

Now, as Putin prepares to re-take his old job, pundits find themselves asking
the same question again that they did in those first months of 2000: “Who is
Mr. Putin?” Is he a leader who can guarantee Russia’s stability and economic
growth, or is he someone the West should fear on the international stage?

The obvious answer is that nothing has changed and Putin will continue to be
the person he has been for the last 12 years: a politician prickly on the
political front, but progressive on the economic one.